Children's commissioner attacks teens in adult jails policy

Ms Mitchell will tour Australia until August to speak to children and child advocates.

She is in Cairns in the state's far north for the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care conference.

Ms Mitchell says Queensland is the only jurisdiction that sends juveniles to adult correctional facilities.

"Sending 17-year-olds to adult prisons is actually a contravention of Australia's obligations under the Convention for the Rights of the Child," she said.

"That convention, which nearly every country in the world has signed, specifically notes that children have particular developmental needs and requirements and need to be treated differently than adults and that includes 17-year-olds."

Ms Mitchell has called for a rethink on government spending to tackle the over-representation of Aboriginal children in the child protection and juvenile justice systems.

She says funding for jails should be diverted to improving communities.

"Instead of investing resources into expensive justice and care systems, we should be putting those kinds of resources into family support systems, into programs that help people deal with drug abuse, into diversionary programs that help people get training and a job, into programs that help kids stay at school," she said.